Jerry Paper Charms The Island Of Aruba In His Video For “Halfway Zen”

A fan asked him to visit the Caribbean. So he did.

Last fall, synth-pop savant Jerry Paper—the conceptual alter-ego of actual human Lucas Nathan—received an email from a fan named Luis with the subject line tour request for a tiny island! Luis wanted Jerry Paper to play a show inside his friend’s parents’ Surinamese restaurant on the island of Aruba. So, after what Nathan described to The FADER as "frugal finagling," he and his filmmaking buds at 3PM decided to make the trip. Footage from their strange, sun-soaked experience was then edited into a video for woozy track "Halfway Zen," premiering above.

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Although his show wound up happening inside "this weird pseudo-thatched-hut complex staffed almost exclusively by apathetic Dutch teenagers," Nathan remembers the performance very, very fondly. Luis turned up in just a robe, mirroring Jerry Paper's signature kimono look. "I played on the floor of a hut-bar out of a single 4-foot tall speaker that Luis’ friends had built themselves, seemingly from shit gathered from a dump," Nathan recalled in an email. "It sounded like shit, but was one of the most fun shows I've ever played. Is it surprising that shows with terrible sound in strange places tend to be the best, or is it another of life's small perfections?"